Does catching a mouse that was running through my house with my bare hands make me a county girl???? 

Let me start by saying that I grew up a city girl. When I first moved to the country side with my hubby I was horrified by the though of a mouse in my house.  They try to move in every winter - can't really blame them since our house is warm and outside not so much - but there is just no room in my house for them!  I hated it but I slowly got used to every fall/winter having to trap anything that was trying to mouch some warmth from our house. 

Now flash foward to this morning.  I hear a scream from Magnus.  Blood curdling. Of course I go running only to find him not near death as I expected but to hear him exclaiming he saw a mouse. (After the inital scream he was excited.) I have to admit to casually thinking - kinda of early for a mouse to be moving in.  By this point the mouse was long gone and to be honest there would be no way for me catch him (or her, not really sure!) so I walked way.  Told the kidlets it would probably go back out the way it came in.  That makes me a county girl right?  Casual about mice has got to a sign that you have lost all touch with city life!  ;)

45 minutes later I hear more blood curdling screams.  This time from both kidlets (who would have thought they grew up on a farm??).  Of course I was on the phone.  (I am sure the person thought my kidlets were being murdered!)  Apparently the mouse was back.  The poor mouse is so petrified by this point it is running and hopping in circles and just trying to find a place to hide.  It was pretty small so my guess it was a young one.  Not enough human hiding experience yet.  The kidlets decide to try to catch it with a bucket but of course it was much too fast.  It hides once more but this time I know it is behind the book cases.  So we leave it and maybe twenty minutes later I walk through the room and there he/she is - right out in the open, crouched down and shaking.  I am pretty is was in shock.  My kidlets have nearly frightened it to death.  Nice.

So this is how I ended up with a mouse in my hands.  He/she was frozen in fear.  I scooped him/her up and we brought him/her outside.  Of course Harper, being my daughter, took some photos.  She was running for the camera before I even had it picked up.  :)

We put it in the garden.

I know that any county person will tell that it was stupid of me to let it go outside of my house.  It is just going to move right back in, start a family and host bbq's for all the neighborhood mice but just look at that face.  I maybe a county girl but I am not that tough yet!  I leave the trapping for my hubby...